ss.

The emigrant ship whose arrival we witnessed had been seventy odd days
from port to port. Her passengers were of the poorest class. Their
means had been nearly exhausted in going from Dublin to Liverpool, and
in endeavors to obtain work in the latter city, previous to bidding a
reluctant but eternal farewell to the old country. They came on board
worn out--wan--the very life of many dependent on a speedy passage
over the Atlantic. In this they were disappointed. The ship had
encountered a succession of terrific gales; it had leaked badly, and
they had been confined, a great part of the voyage, to their narrow
quarters between decks, herded together in a noisome and pestilential
atmosphere, littered with damp straw, and full of filth.

What marvel that disease and death invaded their ranks? One after
another, many died and were launched into the deep sea. The ship
entered Fayal to refit, and there that clime of endless summer proved
to the emigrants more fatal than the blast of the upas-poisoned valley
of Java. The delicious oranges, and the mild Pico wine, used liberally
by the passengers, sowed the seeds of death yet more freely among
their ranks. On the passage from Fayal, the mortality was dreadful,
but at length, decimated and diseased, the band of emigrants arrived
at Boston.

It was a summer's day--but no cheering ray of light fell upon the
spires of the city. The sky was dark and gloomy; the bay spread out
before the eye like a huge sheet of lead, and the clouds swept low and
heavily over the hills and house tops.

After the vessel was moored, all the passengers who were capable of
moving, or of being moved, came up or were brought up on deck. We
scanned their wan and haggard features with curiosity and pity.

Here was the wreck of an athletic man. His eyes, deep-sunken in their
orbits, were nearly as glassy as those of a corpse; his poor attire
hung loosely on his square shoulders. His matted beard rendered his
sickly, greenish countenance yet more wan and livid. He crawled about
the deck _alone_--his wife and five children, they for whom he had
lived and struggled, for whose sake he was making a last desperate
exertion, had all been taken from him on the voyage. We addressed him
some questions touching his family.

"They are all gone," said he, "the wife and the childer. The last
one--the babby--died this mornin'--she lies below. They're best off
where they are."

In another place sat a shivering,